Packing and Assorted Pictures

When I went back to America, I didn't have too much time to pack stuff here in Korea. I pretty much threw in a few outfits, and went. I did have enough mental energy to think through the fact that I'd probably be doing some shopping while I was Stateside, so I brought two empty suitcases with me. When I came back to Korea, they were most certainly NOT empty.

What kinds of things might a Midwestern expat in Korea want to stock up on, you might ask? Well, here in full color is the answer. Yes, I did actually manage to fit all of that into suitcases. It was something of an ordeal. If you don't believe me, just ask my dad. He hates my packing adventures ;)

This is the grand overview is all of the non-clothes items I bought to take back with me. 

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Believe it or not, I haven't been able to find any gummy snacks or body spritz in Korea. So, I made sure I had plenty of both!

Yes, that is a red waffle iron. Yes, it does make heart shaped waffles. Yes, it was in the valentine's day clearance. Yes, I will have to transform the electricity before I can use it in Korea. Yes, it is TOTALLY worth it ;)

Thankfully, all of the boxes of mix fit into one of my carryons, and I didn't have to factor them into the weight restrictions at all. It would have been unfortunate if I did have to weigh all of them. 

That plastic thing with a handle is for transporting various baked goods around on the subway. I'm hoping that it will make it significantly easier.

Here is one reason why America is a great country. Do you see those Dr. Seuss books? Dr. Seuss is a WONDERFUL tool for teaching English. Each one of those books was only $5 each! It was pretty exciting!

Possibly the most ridiculous purchases I made, a pillow and a memory foam mattress pad. Bedding in Korea is quite different from Western bedding, and it has proven to be quite uncomfortable. It was a major major pain to get this stuff back to Seoul with me, but it has been totally worth it!

In other news, I got to spend a lovely valentine's day with my friends Sarah, Sarah and Wei Wei. It was quite interesting having three Sarahs in one house, but at least it was easy for Wei Wei to get our attention! Whenever she called for any of us, we were all paying attention to her!

Note the two lovely vases of roses. One of them came from Sarah K's parents in Indy, and one of them came from Wei Wei's boyfriend in Morocco. We were a very international household. 

Dinner is served!

Hello Wei Wei!

A little of this and that

After six weeks of radio silence, I'm back. It's been quite a full six weeks, complete with a whirlwind trip back to the States and the death of my grandmother. School started up last week, but we had level testing and sorting people into classes the first week, then a three day break this week, so tomorrow will be the first real day of classes. I'm excited to get to know a new set of students this semester. Our enrollment has grown by leaps and bounds since last semester, so I'll have nearly 50 students this semester. It's going to be pretty busy.

I spent the last day of my mini-vacation teaching one of my American guy friends how to make lasagna. This is something of a feat in Korea. We had to make our own ricotta cheese, pasta sauce and even noodles. It took almost 10 hours, all said and done. We also did some shopping in there (for things such as stock pots and LCD TVs for Foster's new apartment) and quite a bit of dish washing. It was a nice way to spend the day, complete with lots of laughter and good Italian food. The lasagna is safely tucked away in Foster's freezer for an important dinner party in two weekends.

I finished writing the syllabi for all of my classes tonight. It looks like it is going to be a busy semester, especially with 50 students. I changed the assignments around from the way I did it last semester, so hopefully that will help a little bit with the backlog of grading. It should be an adventure!

I have to teach a class in seven hours, and get to school early to get my syllabus printed for the first class. Hopefully I'll be able to connect well with my students, and tomorrow will go smoothly. I have pictures from the lasagna adventure today and some stuff from America that I'll hopefully get put up in the next day or so.

One other important announcement: Because of the recent time change in America, things have changed with the time zones. Here's the new key.

Eastern time: There is a 13 hour difference. Add 1 and swap the AM/PM.
Central time: There is a 14 hour difference. Add 2 and swap the AM/PM.
Mountain time: There is a 15 hour difference. Add 3 and swap the AM/PM.
Pacific time: There is a 16 hour difference. Add 4 and swap the AM/PM.

First days in America

Whew... It has certainly been a whirlwind in the past few days. Hopefully I'll get a post on the Lunar New Year finished up soon, but for now I want to give everyone a brief update.

I found out on Friday morning that my grandma was having some health problems that were fairly serious. After a day and a night of praying and thinking, my parents and I decided that it would be a good idea for me to cancel my planned trip to China and come back home. We made that decision around 11 am on Saturday morning, and my flight left Incheon International Airport at 6:45 pm on Saturday. It was a pretty crazy morning as I tried to get all of my China plans cancelled and get the ticket for America and pack and such.

I made it to the airport on time and caught a flight to Detroit. The flight was pretty uneventful, but it was really really long. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who has a nearly impossible time sleeping on a plane and there weren't any good movies. Sad day. I landed in Detroit and it had started snowing. I was really really hoping that there wouldn't be any problems with my flight to Cincinnati. It ended up being a little bit delayed, but I landed in Cincinnati around 11:30pm on Saturday. With the time zones factored in, Saturday lasted for 38 hours. I think I can officially say it was the longest day of my life thus far ;)

My friends Kristen and Nate were waiting for me at the airport. We made a brief stop at Wal Mart to pick up essential things like cold medicine and a pre-paid cell phone. By the time I made it back to their house in Lawrenceburg, I'd been awake (minus a few dozing sorts of catnaps) for just under 55 hours, but my body was absolutely convinced that it was the middle of the afternoon and didn't want to sleep. It was most unfortunate.

I was talking with some friends on facebook during my layover in Detroit and discovered that one of my good friends was getting baptized in Lafayette on Sunday. I decided that I would be completely crazy and drive up to Lafayette for church. So, I woke up around 6:15 on Sunday morning and drove North. Thankfully, the roads were good and there wasn't much of a problem with snow. I made it up there and surprised pretty much everyone, since nobody really knew I was back.

All this time, I was starting to feel more and more miserable and sick. Monday morning I woke up and I was having trouble breathing, my chest hurt, I had a nasty cough and I was pretty dizzy. I called my dad and we decided that I should come back down to Indianapolis to see my parent's family doctor. Thankfully, I still have insurance in America. I went to the doctor and went through all of my symptoms and he checked me over. It turned out that I had a bad cold, a severe case of sleep deprivation, and an ear infection in my right ear. Out of all of the places that hurt, my right ear was definitely not one of them. So I don't know how that happened, but there we have it.

Last night I went to the hospital to see my grandma. She is still pretty weak and still looks pretty jaundiced. She was awake and able to talk a little bit when I was there. It seems that all of her bloodwork numbers are moving in the right direction, so I'm thankful for that!

Lastly, my dad and sister and I went to donatos for dinner. It was wonderful to have real pizza again! There was plenty of cheese, plenty of sauce, and no corn or mayo on the pizza! All in all, it is good to be back in America again. I'm still a little jet lagged. I'm able to stay up until around 11ish, but I still wake up around 4. I've been able to go back to sleep, but I haven't been able to sleep past 7 yet. Hopefully it will all be better in a few days!!

Intensives are finished!!

It's been a pretty crazy few weeks around here. I've been teaching another intensive class. The movies class was a for credit class that was only open to university students. The class that I just finished was supposed to be something similar to that. My school asked me to choose an American novel to teach in a two week class.

I thought about the various options I had, and decided that, all things considered, "To Kill a Mockingbird" would be a good choice. It is set at about a 9th grade reading level. I spent quite a bit of time trying to explain to three different people exactly what it would mean for me to teach a class about a novel. The students would have to have a high enough English level to read about 30 pages each night. Every person I tried to explain this to assured me that they understood, and that they wanted a class for high level students.

So. I prepped out this entire class. The first day of class, the administration managed to change my schedule and cancel one of my days of class because they had other KBU duties that they wanted me to participate in. So I scrambled around and reworked the class schedule. Apparently my class was quite popular, and quite a few students had tried to sign up for it. The school capped the class at 10 students, but at the beginning, there were definitely more than that who showed up. In all of the students, there wasn't one single student whose English was good enough to read even a single chapter of the book.

It was definitely an interesting two weeks. Each day I scrambled, trying to find some way that I could actually teach something that would be useful to my students. We never did actually read the book, but we watched the movie and had some good discussion about some of the main themes. I hope that my students learned something. It definitely stressed me out a lot though. Especially since I never knew who would show up. By the end of the class, there was only one student who showed up. It was actually fairly discouraging, but it is finished now. I have to teach one Sunday school lesson tomorrow, then I'm officially on vacation!!

Next week is the Lunar New Year, which is a big huge deal here in Asia. I'm not exactly sure what all the celebrations will entail, but all of my other Foreigner friends have time off from work, so we have some general revelries planned!

This afternoon, some of the guys from my church came over. Two of them are Texans, and they have been missing American style barbeque pretty badly. I made pork barbeque, corn bread, garlic carrots, creamed corn and chocolate chip cookies. And of course, the inevitable Southern sweet iced tea. We spent almost 5 hours sitting around laughing and talking. We all laughed so much that our faces hurt, but we also had some really serious conversations. I can't think of anything better than good food, good friends and good conversation to start off a vacation.

Next week I'm going to be catching up with friends I haven't been able to see much of because of my insane work schedule, and get ready to leave for China. It is pretty crazy to think that in one week, I'll be in yet another foreign country... It will be interesting to see if Korea feels like home when I come back to it after being away for three weeks.

Anyway. Hopefully I'll have time next week to catch up on some of the blog posts I've been meaning to write, but just not had words left for at the end of the day. And there will definitely be adventures to report from China!

The Subway

I've been pretty much all over the city of Seoul this week, doing various things. My primary method of travel is the subway, although I did spend about two hours on a single bus ride from the southwestern part of the city to the northeastern part where I live... That was an adventure ;)

I talk a lot in conversations with people back in the States about how crowded the subway is and what it looks like and such, but I thought I'd show a few pictures. I didn't actually take any of these pictures, they are all from a google search... But they give you a pretty good idea of what goes on in Seoul!

This is an empty subway train. Doesn't it look nice? Padded seats that are heated in the winter, clean and shiny, plenty of space between the seats...

Sometimes the subway looks like this. There are a lot of people, but it certainly isn't anything unreasonable. The subway isn't so terrible when it is like this. 

Unfortunately, it can also get like this. 

And this. This is what it is like every morning when I go to work, every night when I come home, almost anytime I go anywhere on the weekends and practically all the time when I am closer to downtown. There are times when it is literally like a tide of people getting on and off. I couldn't stop moving with the flow if I wanted to. Sometimes, if there are enough people getting off, I just have to get off with them even if it isn't my stop, then fight my way on the train again. 

This is certainly an extreme example of what the traffic can look like in the area where you get on and off trains, but I've definitely seen it like this before. Sometimes people will be so packed in that you can't really move until another train comes and frees up some space temporarily. I try to avoid the stations that are notorious for that, either through poor design or ridiculous traffic flows. 

The subway does do a very good job of being easy to navigate. The announcements about the upcoming stop are in Korean first, then in English. At some of the larger stations, they also make announcements in Chinese and Japanese. When you have to transfer, there are clear signs marking the way in English and Korea with station names in Chinese characters. 

There are also signs above the door at every single station that tell you what the previous, current and upcoming stops are. This is quite helpful, especially when I'm someplace that I'm not terribly familiar with. 

This is a shot of my own little subway station. I climb these stairs pretty much every day. I can tell that this picture was taken on a weekend. I didn't go look at a calendar, but look at all of the Koreans in their hiking gear. My station is named after the mountain that is very nearby, so it is quite popular on weekends. I always feel a little strange on Sundays as I walk through all of the hikers wearing dress clothes and lugging a cello around ;)

The Seoul subway system is HUGE. In 2009, there were just over 2 billion passengers. There are about 7 million people who ride the subway every single day. It should be noted that this map isn't really an accurate map. In general, there are about 2-3 minutes in between each station. The trains come anywhere from every 2 minutes to every 25 minutes, depending on the line you are on and the time of day/day of the week. It costs about $0.80 to ride for about 10ish stops. The most you can be charged for a subway trip is $2.20. To ride from one end to the other can take anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours. 

As the last picture in this very picture-filled post, here are some of the places that I go regularly in Seoul. 

1. Where I live

2. Where I work

3. My church

4. Where my small group meets

5. Where I go each week for discipleship meetings with Becky

6. These are the places I have to go to find a store that is similar to a Wal Mart or Target instead of a small market.

7. This is where I go each week for a language exchange and is a good meeting place as well.

8. This is the foreigners section of Seoul. I go here whenever I need to buy spices or other Western style food or go shopping for any clothes. 

I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal ;)

It's been a little crazy around here lately. Christmas was pretty low key. I managed to catch a whopper of a cold, so I slept through most of the holidays. I was teaching a winter intensive class at my university called American Culture in Film. We had about three hours each day for class, so I'd lecture for awhile to highlight the various aspects of American culture in the movie of the day and teach any necessary vocab or idiom, then we'd watch the movie and have some discussion at the end.

There were several interesting moments in this class. We watched quite a variety of movies, ranging from 1937 to 2009. Most of my students really liked the black and white films we watched. All of my female students agreed that Jimmy Stewart was pretty hot ;) It was a lot of fun to watch my students watch the movies. Most of the films they had never even heard of before, so it was all new to them. They were really excited about ET and The Wizard of Oz. I did a poll to see what their favorite movie was, and it was a tie between A Charlie Brown Christmas and The Shop Around the Corner. I definitely wasn't expecting either of those to top the list.

Prepping and teaching a 3 hour class every day was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It definitely took a lot of time, because I had to watch every single movie in advance to make notes and create a lesson out of it. Between being sick and teaching, things have been pretty boring around here lately.

The one big exciting thing happening is the plans for my trip to China are pretty much all made! I'll be leaving in 23 days for a three week tour of six cities in China. I'll get to see a lot of my Chinese friends from my Purdue days, which I'm pretty happy about! The one difficult thing will be packing. I'll be visiting the Northernmost province of China that borders Siberia, and end up in the Southernmost province of China that is very near Taiwan. Siberia is a frozen wasteland that is ridiculously cold. Taiwan is a tropical climate. I think that this trip will prove the wonderful value of layers ;)

And finally, to end this incredibly haphazard blog entry, I give you a strip from the ever-class Calvin and Hobbes.



From the Republic of Korea, I wish you a happy Friday (or Thursday, depending on when you read this)!!

Happy New Year!

As the sun set in my little corner of Seoul, on the first day of 2011, it made me stop and think. This has been quite a year. It started with a lot of uncertainty and pain with the ordeal of the headaches and now I find myself settled into a new life on the other side of the world. Thanks to everyone who prayed for me and encouraged me and put up with me during all of the craziness of 2010. I'm blessed to have you in my life.

As Alfred, Lord Tennyson said in his poem, "In Memorandum":

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.